The evolution of money, payments, and financial infrastructure

Automation alone will not define fintech success 

By Louisa Murray, CSO at Equals Money x Railsr

In recent years, the rapid adoption of automated payments technology and processes have reshaped finance and treasury functions worldwide.

Customer demand for seamless experiences combined with the requirements of instant payments, now mandated in Europe under SEPA, make manual workflows untenable. For financial technology companies, automation is no longer a differentiator; it has become table stakes, essential to delivering embedded finance solutions, 24/7/365 processing and instantaneous transfers.

Now, three structural shifts – embedded finance, tokenisation and agentic AI – are set to push the boundaries of what ‘automated’ money can do. 

These innovations aim to promise unprecedented speed and efficiency, opening up new revenue opportunities for B2B and B2C businesses. But they are also rewriting the rules of how financial services work, including the way that fintechs operate and how we support our customers and partners.

The challenge is more than just deploying automation. It’s about building the internal structures, culture and operational model to deliver it responsibly and at scale. The winners will be those that leverage high-performance AI-powered tools to offer a more sophisticated, service-led framework.

Embedded finance as a value-added service

The business case for integrating financial services directly into customer journeys is clear: improve experiences and reduce friction, while retaining value. What remains to be established across many markets, however, is how precisely those services can be designed around a platform’s specific commercial model and client base.

The strongest returns are being generated by businesses that resist off-the-shelf solutions in favour of tailored propositions. Ones that are aligned to their vertical, transaction profile and customer behaviour. For example, a business handling high-volume microtransactions will require a different model to a B2B platform managing fewer, high-value payments with longer settlement cycles. In both cases, ROI stems from solving a defined commercial plan. 

Onboarding workflows are also crucial. Embedded finance is often ‘invisible’ until an issue arises. When a financial product is woven into a platform, end users do not distinguish between the provider and the brand they are working through. If a payment fails, the brand carries reputational risks. Automation increases the speed of compliance checks, leaving human teams to manage complex cases that require enhanced due diligence, but to succeed this model relies on a proactive and collaborative onboarding process designed to mitigate operational disruption. 

For fintechs, this shifts the emphasis internally. Compliance, product, and client teams must work in parallel from the outset. This means building structured onboarding frameworks, clear escalation processes and cultures built around shared ownership and risk. 

The role of tokenisation in automated payment flows

Thanks to MiCA in Europe and the GENIUS Act’s ‘stablecoin summer’, tokenised assets are on a pathway from niche fintech innovations to regulated financial infrastructure: offering an alternative to correspondent banking and SWIFT-mediated cross-border settlement. 

It is expected that tokenisation will reduce working capital and cash flow constraints. But integration and interoperability remain challenges to resolve in 2026. 

Fiat-backed stablecoins like USDC and EURC enable 24/7 settlement and near-real-time cross-border liquidity. This could eventually challenge the operational justification for 60- or 30-day settlement-based payment terms for suppliers, suggesting new commercial models. As with embedded finance, fintechs will need deep understanding of their customers to best educate them on the possibilities that tokenisation can unlock.

Stablecoins are just the start. Tokenised deposits and other digital assets will serve different use cases. For example, tokenised commercial cash might be a better use case for corporate treasury, given its potential for easier integration with existing systems. 

But while a stablecoin might be able to settle a cross-border transaction in seconds, the technology itself cannot explain a ‘frozen’ wallet to a corporate treasurer or advise on how to navigate anti-money laundering flags in a new jurisdiction.

Bridging this crucial gap between digital assets and traditional fiat balance sheets involves ensuring that 24/7 settlement is matched by expert, human accountability and financial governance support. It’s up to fintech providers to build the internal risk frameworks and client support functions that make tokenised infrastructure usable and trustworthy. Success here lies in combining technical know-how with regulatory fluency and a service layer that gives clients confidence in an always-on environment.

Human intervention in agentic AI

The real disruption facing every business this year is agentic AI: both in terms of what it can enable for fintech infrastructure, and the paradigm shift created by agentic commerce. 

The first operating systems for agentic AI payments were released in 2025, and the technology is emerging fast. This could mark the beginning of the end for traditional bank cards, as AI agents can enter account-to-account details instantly.

But agentic commerce raises urgent, unanswered questions around standards, fraud and liability:

• What happens when an autonomous agent makes an unauthorised payment? 
• If a transaction fails, who does the customer call? 
• What safeguards and protections will customers have in place?
• And, ultimately, who becomes liable? The platform or the entity that authorised the agent?

Our industry needs to proactively collaborate with regulators to help them build the guardrails that the technology itself cannot provide. If we don’t, it will be the tech giants that write the rules. 

So far, there is no clear winner among the myriad competing systems, and we can expect to see an increase in non-US-centric models in 2026, further fragmenting the market. This creates a paradox. The more seamless the technology becomes, the more complex it is for businesses to manage emerging regulations in different jurisdictions. 

As these shifts take place, a nimble and responsive tech stack will be core to ensuring competitive advantage. Again, agentic AI has a role to play, with engineers becoming a technical lead to their own squad of AI agents in the race to adapt at speed. Yet the market USP will not be the code or the algorithm; it will be the customer-centric thinking that informs it, and the support provided to help organisations manage liability and harness the value of automated, embedded payments.

Fintechs that succeed in this environment will be those that can be trusted to provide that crucial layer of service between the technology and the customer, aligning innovation with strong internal governance and client-facing teams from the outset.